Books and their makers during the Middle Ages

by George Haven Putnam

In France, as will be noted later, the first printers were directly associated with the university, succeeding immediately to the official university scribes, and the production of books through the presses continued to be under direct control of the university, as had been the case from the beginning with the production of books in manuscript. The fact that the control of the first French presses rested with the university Faculty, undoubtedly exercised an important influence on the choice of the books to be printed, and the first issues of the French presses were, therefore, in the main restricted to editions of the classics or to works of jurisprudence and medicine belonging to the official lists of the university texts. The earlier issues of the German press, on the other hand, were books belonging in no way to the university curriculum, but were addressed directly to the interests of the people at large.

While the modifications introduced by Gutenberg into the methods of printing, under which the old engraved blocks were replaced by movable leaden type, seem slight in themselves, they constituted nevertheless a new art. The actual changes were but inconsiderable, but the practical result was a revolution in the possibilities of the press.

Gutenberg’s work as a printer was, from a commercial point of view, never successful. During the eighteen years which elapsed between the time of his invention and the date of his death, he seems to have been always under the pressure of debt and money difficulties. He had in fact no time to make money. He had given up, in his devotion to his invention, previous business undertakings which were remunerative, and he had absorbed in the development of the printing-press all the resources that he could control. His interest, however, was evidently that of perfecting an art rather than of creating a business; and in spite of his various difficulties and his several lawsuits with his associates, it is in evidence as part of the testimony in these very suits, that he was recognised by all as a man of knowledge and character, and as a born leader, whose integrity of purpose and whose nobility of aim were acknowledged by all with whom he had to do. With all his misfortunes, he seems never for a moment to have lost confidence in the value to the world of his idea, and to this idea, with no thought of personal gain or advantage, he was willing to devote his means and his life.

The difference between the production each year of a few hundred copies of religious or classical works by the laborious toil of the monks or the university scribes, works which could at best benefit only the limited circle of readers who were within reach either of the monasteries or of the universities, and a world-wide distribution, as well of the great books of the earlier times which belonged to the world’s literature as of the current thoughts of the contemporary generation, was a difference, not of degree, but of kind. It was a revolution in the history of human thought and in the influence of thought upon humanity.

If the invention of printing had not taken shape in the brain of Gutenberg, it would doubtless have come to the world through some other worker, and, in fact, with no very great delay, for other men were already busying themselves with the same great need and were on the track of the same means of supplying the need. As the history stands, however, the credit for the revolution must be given to the mirror-maker of Mayence. Other sailors would certainly have found their way to the Western Continent if the opportunity or the attempt of Columbus had failed, but it is to Columbus that history gives the laurel crown.

Gutenberg, and the printers who followed him, naturally selected as the first models for their newly founded type the script letters with which they were familiar in the best manuscripts. The first font of type manufactured by Gutenberg, which was used in his earliest publication, The Folio Bible, was known as the “missal type,” having been copied from the script adopted by the monks for the books of worship. This style of type was followed for a long time for Bibles and for religious works generally. One of the earlier objections against printed books was that they were so much less beautiful in their appearance than the work of the best scribes, and it was the finest script that remained as the ideal to be attained by the type-founders and the clear black impression of the best oak-gall writing ink that was to be imitated by the impressions from the presses.

The scholarly lovers of fine books in Germany regarded the new art at the outset with no little disapproval and criticism. The collectors who had brought together, with much labour and expenditure, stores of valuable manuscripts dreaded lest, through the multiplication of comparatively inexpensive copies of their texts, the value of their collections should be taken away. When the messengers of Cardinal Bessarion were shown by the Greek Laskaris (later the author of the first Greek grammar that came into print), a specimen of one of the earlier printed books, they spoke sneeringly of this so-called discovery which had been made by a barbarian from a German city.[429] The great manuscript-dealer, Vespasiano, writing in 1482 concerning the magnificent ducal library in Urbino, the volumes in which had been largely either collected or purchased by himself or under his own direction, says: “In this library all the volumes are of perfect beauty, all written, by skilled scribes, on parchment and many of them adorned with exquisite miniatures. The collection contains no single printed book. The Duke (Frederick) would be ashamed to have a printed book in his library.”[430] By collectors like Frederick and manuscript-dealers like Vespasiano, the new art was considered to be merely a mechanical method of producing inartistic volumes, with which none but uncultivated people could be satisfied.

For a number of years, therefore, after the work of the first presses, there were still produced beautiful specimens of manuscripts, more particularly of Italian and French books of worship, and for this class of manuscripts the work of the hand illuminators and miniature painters continued to be utilised. In Germany there are various examples of books which had been printed, being again produced in written copy, as for instance, the Chronicon Urspergense, of Hroswitha.[431] It was also the case that for the production of large choir-books the work of the scribes continued to be useful.

Trithemius, Abbot of Sponheim, wrote to Gerlach, Abbot of Deutz, a letter which was printed in 1494 in Mayence, under the title, De Laude Scriptorum Manualium. In this he says:

“A work written on parchment could be preserved for a thousand years, while it is probable that no volume printed on paper will last for more than two centuries. Many important works have not been printed, and the copies required of these must be prepared by scribes. The scribe who ceases his work because of the invention of the printing-press can be no true lover of books, in that, regarding only the present, he gives no due thought to the intellectual cultivation of his successors. The printer has no care for the beauty and the artistic form of books, while with the scribe this is a labour of love.”[432]